Ann Ormonde (Fianna Fail)

I support Senator O'Toole's comments. The Lisbon Agenda will be discussed later this week and we must focus on our teachers to achieve a knowledge-based economy. If teachers are not given the freedom to administer their responsibilities, it will not matter what kind of education system we have because it will not work. I welcome a debate on this issue.

The Higher Education Authority has taken over the funding of all third level institutions. A debate on how it will administer funds to institutes of technology and how benchmarking will be rated would be worthwhile. This is a significant responsibility and I welcome the concept of putting the funding of all institutions under the one roof but this issue needs to be teased out so that postgraduate courses and doctorates provided by the institutes of technology can also be funded. I would like to ascertain how funding will be allocated and benchmarked, as it is worthy of a debate.